Man sentenced to 13 years for spitting on cops tells the court what’s up (and some other court badassery)

This man was sentenced to 13 years for spitting on two cops. I wish the video was uncensored, but here’s him cursing the judge and the whole of the court.

Also, from infoshop news, convicted animal-rights arsonist Walter Bond, when ordered to pay 1.1 million in restitution to the owner of a sheepskin factory:

“…you have won nothing! […] I also want you to know that I will never willingly pay you one dollar, not one! I hope your business fails and you choke to death on every penny you profit from animal murder! I hope you choke on it and burn in hell!”

My favorite courtroom speech of all time is probably that of Haymarket Martyr Louis Lingg, who, after explaining that even the judge had admitted his innocence (and yet was still going to see him hang):

I do not recognize your law, jumbled together as it is by the nobodies of bygone centuries, and I do not recognize the decision of the court. […] And not even under such a law—a law that a schoolboy must despise—not even by such methods have they been able to “legally” convict us. […] I declare again, frankly and openly, that I am in favor of using force. I have told Captain Schaack, and I stand by it,“if you cannonade us, we shall dynamite you.” You laugh! Perhaps you think,“you’ll throw no more bombs”; but let me assure you I die happy on the gallows, so confident am I that the hundreds and thousands to whom I have spoken will remember my words; and when you shall have hanged us, then—mark my words—they will do the bombthrowing! In this hope do I say to you: I despise you. I despise your order, your laws, your force-propped authority. Hang me for it!

In Amsterdam a few years back, I went to the court hearings of squatters who were accused of defending their home against eviction by the police. The judge said to one man, “You have been accused of throwing a tea kettle at a police officer.” And the man just laughed and laughed, because he’d done it and he’d be proud to do it again.

I understand why people hem and haw their way through the legal system, because it does no one any good for us to be locked in cages, but there’s something beautiful about watching people be willing to say “yeah, whatever, fuck you” to the court.

3 thoughts on “Man sentenced to 13 years for spitting on cops tells the court what’s up (and some other court badassery)”

Yeah, whatever is left of the legal system–particularly in North America–has been abused and mangled by so many people “in power” who wouldn’t know a rat’s asshole from a wedding ring. While it can be applauded that mental health intervention has been happening more often, I don’t think that will be the savior of the American. Rather, it is the awareness of laws and bylaws as they exist, and not such wonderful statements made by the zealous braggarts who said that “all men are created equal.”